


Marbre

by Judith H (Elizabeth_Mary_Holmes)



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bottom Erik Lehnsherr, Charles is a writer, Dom/sub Undertones, Greece, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Pygmalion (kinda), Top Charles Xavier, Topping from the Bottom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:41:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25785313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elizabeth_Mary_Holmes/pseuds/Judith%20H
Summary: Charles had had many lovers that he had been very careful not to love. Charles wanted a harsh and sturdy lover; a lover that would not break. [...] At the moment in his existence when he felt he was becoming bitter and somehow upset that life did not bring him the one he was expecting, he met Erik Lehnsherr.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 10
Kudos: 30





	Marbre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [admamu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/admamu/gifts).
  * A translation of [Marbre](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23013418) by [admamu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/admamu/pseuds/admamu). 



> _As a remembrance of their days of future past. (and of our present )_  
>  Two persons to thank here, admamu for her faith, **you** for being here today.  
> And many happy returns of the day to you, dear a.

Charles had had many lovers that he had been very careful not to love. Charles had wanted a harsh and sturdy lover; a lover that would not break. From a trip to Greece in his youth, he had caught a passion for marble. He had wanted a lover made out of marble, like the Parthenon, enduring and proud, unbreakable.

When you reach the Acropolis through the Propylaea - that vast hall leading you to the sanctuary - , the steep slope, only made of lines: A huge horizontal step, vertical pillars and facades, is ruthless and beats you down. You take pleasure in your smallness. But your humility is not a humiliation: it seems to you you participate to the architectural _grandeur_. To be there, at the foot of the sacred, you forget yourself and that, in that oblivion, you increase your worth. Your admiration for the work of art, left uncorrupted by time, that will last long after you, increases, raises you. It amplifies your own being.

The Athenian sun was hazy yet pitiless to the visitors; Charles had sat on one of the stone blocks that littered the forecourt. For all hot it might have been, the material was indifferent. He had put down his hand on it. Slowly, he had caressed it. All around him, the whiteness, the dryness, that stiff starkness, had compelled him. There was no need for them to be figurative and Charles would not remember a statue that would have left its mark on him. His desire had been born solely from the contact with the stone. He had imagined it was alive, that it was pulsing and resisting. Knowing it would never yield, it had made him hard.

Out of that impression, he had made a fantasy that no lover had been able to make real. Under the protection of Goddess Athena, helmeted and wise, he had made a promise to himself; one of those promises you would never admit to no one but that keeps you straight, almost stiff with faithfulness: only to the one that would have the coldness and firmness of the Parthenon stones, he would give his love. Of that imaginary lover, Charles would have not been able to draw the profile. He would not have been able to say the exact characteristics he had expected from him. Only, that he knew that feeling him under the palm of his hand, he would recognise him. 

To his disadvantage, Charles was too handsome (he was too clever too; the complexity of his fantasy demonstrated that excess). He was not very tall but with muscle enough not to look frail. He was pale too, of that English pallor that came from his mother, and that did not fear the sun. He had an expressive and smiling face, his affable ways encouraged trust and closeness towards him. He was easily moved: he laughed a lot and cried often. His mouth was thin, of a marked red, vermillion, a call to a flurry of kisses. Out of his brown mane he had made everything: from very long to very short, he was well-aware that any kind of length would be an invitation to hook for desire of any type. Beauty was a smokescreen, first for those who possess it, but Charles had nothing to hide, especially to those contemplating it because of the wants they projected on it, it was hard to unhook them. 

The phenomenon that was Charles' beauty would have been nothing without his eyes that were, when meeting him, like a catalyst precipitating the reaction. They were very blue and clear, so clear one could not regret drowning into them, garnished with long eyelashes and excessively moveable eyebrows. With those eyes, and only those eyes, the damage was done : Charles was _une gueule d'ange_ and no matter what he did, whether it was shaving his head or dressing from head to toe in leather, he was still _une gueule d'ange_. What happened after that observation went without saying. Any common man can take, facing _une gueule d'ange_ , two possible attitudes: either he protects or he sullies. Or, more often, both at the same time, the need to protect arising like an atonement to sullying. And so Charles aroused in his lovers, that common vulgarity, specific to male desire, that was the concurrence of a wish to abase and a protective urge. Because he had a mouth made to sing hymns, some wanted to see that mouth blow some pricks and cleanse it afterward doing penance.

Charles neither wanted to be protected nor sullied. He wanted to be adored and obeyed.

Finally, Charles did not judge his physical appearance to be an inconvenience. It was a trap to catch dolts it would be easy to get rid of, a filter that allowed him to sort the wheat from the chaff. But till then, gold never came, so far he had only caught dolts. 

At the moment in his existence when he felt he was becoming bitter and somehow upset that life did not bring him the one he was expecting, he met Erik Lehnsherr. 

Privileged, Charles could have been anything he would have wished for. He had chosen to be a writer. Gifted with a sharp knowledge of the human soul and a heavy cultural capital, he had succeeded and his reputation was made. 

And so, during a public reading of his last novel, taking place in a Parisian bookshop, he made Erik Lehnsherr's acquaintance. Lehnsherr was a book reviewer, famous because incorruptible, his frankness, terrifying, more often excoriating than praising. Charles did not fear him; he loved himself too much to imagine someone could hate him. After the reading (Charles read very well, modulating his voice and his _effets_ ), after the lauding questions and the applause, during that moment of niceties when all were packed to the buffet holding their glass, a mutual friend introduced them. Before that witness, they told nothing noticeable and kept to the usual chit-chat, the courtesies one delivers with a fake smile. 

They were left alone.   
  
Of the man facing him, Charles noticed at once his hands. Large and thin, the right one curved around the stem of his glass, the left one was hidden away in a pocket. The movements were swift, without flourish. Long and supple, the fingers were efficient, vine-like, fingers that kept without hurting. Charles imagined the marks those fingers would have been able to leave on his thighs. The skin of the hand was white, of that whiteness specific to redheads, a rose-tinted whiteness, not sickly but feverish, tender, incandescent. Erik's hair and goatee curled, fiery red. 

At that point, there was a pause, between the moment the matchmaker left them and the moment Charles tore his gaze away from that hand in front of him. A rather long pause, silent, during which Charles sank into the contemplation of the hand, of the skin, of the wrist of which the bone frame had the austerity of a reliquary sceptre. Under the skin, the bone, the essential. 

Then Charles rose his head. Erik was smiling, with a knowing look, very infuriating, that did not need to be convinced.

“I don't think we are going to speak about literature,” he said, quite self-assured.

“No," agreed Charles. "You have very handsome hands... However, have you read my book?” 

“Yes, I found it very good. I'll say nice things about it, do not worry.”   
  
“I don't worry but I'd rather be esteemed, whatever the circumstances.”   
  
“You have for yourself such a boundless love.”

“I deserve it.”

“I'll be the judge of that.” concluded the critic.

Charles did not laugh, it was too early to laugh, but he smiled, which, by bouncing effect, accentuated Erik's smile. 

Charles wanted his lovers, even the doltest of them, to be as handsome as he was. In the alliance of bodies, Charles hated bad taste. This one, who might have been disappointing, in that regard, was suitable. 

Indeed Erik Lehnsherr was also very handsome. Tall and slender, just like his hands, he had the vigour of green wood. In his physiognomy, there was not an ounce of flesh or a movement that would have been too much. Everything in him was sparse. From that saved energy obtained in self-restraining lengthily and knowingly, by an effect of subjection towards oneself, exuded a formidable power of which one should fear the wrath and flee the blows. Above the vigorous nape of his neck where, in the shirt collar, the sinews jutted out, gathered the redheadedness, in that burning strangeness that excites the need to touch. His face was perfectly symmetrical and cold, getting icy in a grey gaze, translucent, impervious to squeamishness. The chest was flat, arid, like a recumbent statue lying in a cathedral, watching time and pilgrims pass it. The hips at last, slender, slender and low, coat-hangers to hang to in distress, loosely keeping the trousers that Charles would have not been surprised to see a hand to pull them up. 

It was exactly and without much further hesitation, the challenge Charles was looking for.

“ How long do you consider it necessary for you to be here till you can decently leave?” asked Erik, cavalier, abrupt, raising his chin. 

“Well... I have still a few persons to greet, that I appreciate and that would be upset if I did not greet them,” replied Charles, pushing a resolute and nimble hand through the hair that grazed at his chin at the time. 

“Half an hour then?”   
  
“That's short.”   
  
“I'm sure you can make it shorter...”   
  
“You do have some nerve...”   
  
“And you don't dislike it.”

Erik turned his back on him, throwing him a last “I'll wait for you outside.”  
  
Charles never had a taste for the coded game that was seduction. He often considered it to be a waste of time, especially as his time was valuable and to lose it into circumvolutions that would ultimately lead to disappointments and hurried couplings where the other had for sole fantasy a coarse pornography, irritated him much. And so, unceremoniously had he stopped partners, flies down and trousers pooled at the ankles as soon as a "Blow me" was said, leaving him heaving and nauseous.

At least, that one was in a hurry and if, in the worst case, it would turn out to be awfully banal, Charles would be in bed before 11pm. 

In the taxi that took them back to the hotel where Charles stayed, regularly streaked by the street lights, as one sees in the movies the actors' faces shaped by large stripes of light and slip suddenly into darkness, Erik said while looking Charles in the eye:

“Do you know what I admire the most in you?” 

“In me? In my books?”   
  
“In your books, yes, of course. As for the rest, I don't know you.”   
  
“That is...”

“You command of the metaphor. You compare nothing, you solely draw links.”   
  
“Is that good?”   
  
“Very good, yes... very good.”   
  
It was the first time someone really spoke to Charles of his writing style. For the most part, book reviewers were failed writers, intellectually idle who limited themselves to judge the psychological consistency of his stories. Should one be so little inventive as to only see in a text how it stuck to reality? And for a start, added Charles, what was _reality_?  
  
When they reached the hotel where each time he had to come Paris, Charles would take up residence, Erik asked:  
  
“Don't you live in France?”

“No. In Scotland.”   
  
“But aren't you French?”

“Yes, I am. I hold dual citizenship... but you already know all about that, I repeat it at each interview.”   
  
“Why? Why living in a country where they don't speak the language in which you write?” kept asking Erik has his face quivered with genuine fascination.

In the lobby, a few metres away from the front desk where the staff was waiting, he put his arm on Charles' arm to hold him back. From experience, Charles knew the knowledge we had of other people is always vague, that we interpret their motivations towards us in accordance with our own obsessions, that the expectations we attribute to them always betray our own. And yet, he kept committing the mistake. Dramatically enough, he had wanted to believe that Erik, about to cross a threshold beyond which a danger was lurking, or at least some sort of a risk, demanded, as a token, a truth. 

“For the feeling of unrealness it gives me. I want the language I use to be pure, I want it to be uncorrupted.” 

“I wanted to hear it from you.”   
  
Seemingly relieved, Erik released his arm.

The sexual exchanges Charles was used to never unfold in such a climate of tension, a muffled, unspeakable, tension. Surely, was there commonly a tension but a tension that would fade fast enough, bleakly, with the liberating shot. All in the first flush, fires catching fast and put out faster. Here, it seemed to him that Erik's desire, while being firstly carnal, was also of another kind. By his questions, scarce and straight to the point, by his injuncting tone and attitude, he was building a wall, a way to circumscribe Charles, not in the aim to own him but to take him away from that reality. Because they did not know each other, Charles wondered if it was possible that his own writings had been able to trouble that man to such an extent.

Waiting for his key, leaning on the reception counter, Charles considered being afraid. Surreptitiously, he turn round to steal a glance at Erik who, in the white halo of a floor lamp with a black lampshade, stood himself straight, hands in his pockets. Standing in the centre of the circle of light that stood out on the darker floor, he had the mineral rigidity of a pillar. It was, substantiated, Charles' very own fantasy waiting for him. That realisation made him breathless and he broke in a cold sweat. Nonetheless, he did not step back, and key in hand, he showed Erik to the lift.

At once, things all went out of hand.

In the lift, Erik leaned against the mirror that covered the rear wall. Impassive, he looked at Charles. His hands were still in his pockets. He wore a grey suit and a very white shirt. The morbid lighting of the cabin, the muted tones of his clothes made his skin look diaphanous, where the red hairs were like an unflowing blood. 

Feverish, almost to the point of escape, an impossible escape thwarted by the four walls that surrounded them, Charles asked:   
  
“You don't kiss me?”   
  
“No.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“You're waiting to know what I'm worth.”   
  
“But how...”   
  
“Shut up. You will know.”

Charles was dreaming. In his dream, he was walking. And his dream, more uncompromising than himself, enjoined him to silence and fidelity. He saw himself dispossessed. That dispossession, troubling him, that put him in a state of paralysing stupor, inexorably called to something in him. In our nightmares, the proximity to our desires, so close, so so close, overwhelms us.

The lift stopped. Charles reached the hall before Erik. He opened his room's door. 

No sooner than the door had been closed that Erik pushed Charles against the panel.

Charles did not like bad boys. He abhorred being manhandled. Putting himself together, he forced himself to take over the reins of a situation that was eluding him.

He slapped Erik.

Under his palm, the beard was like a myriad of little hooks in which he got caught without being hurt. The white face was visibly shaken and waltzed to the right. Erik's eyes flickered with a tremendous satisfaction. 

Curtly, Charles said:

“If you want to bang me, wait for me to ask for it. Explicitly”

Erik loosened his grip. With his two hands he leaned on the door in Charles' back, catching him into a vice. His face beamed with an expression of happy blissfulness, this particular expression that was a bit stupid that one has during great revelations or great delights. 

“At last,” he said and his shoulders slumped. “If you want control, you have to take it. Bind me.”   
  
“But... No...”   
  
“Yes. Prove me that you live up to your hopes or I leave straight away.”

“Right... Yes...Alright...”   
  
It took much courage for Charles to ultimately take on the strangeness of his desire. But he did not want to see. After locking the door, he only turn on the light in the bathroom: the neon lamp lit up transversally the bedroom.

“I understand...”, Erik said.

The large bed stood between them as they faced one another. Jointly, they disrobe, each seeing in the other's movements the progress of his own. They had not touched and yet once unveiled their erections were virulent. Charles was horrified to feel in himself such an unsuspected strength. 

Very gently, Erik lied on the centre of the bed. His excitation which only due to anticipation and seemed to be able to last forever, without breaking, bewitched Charles, rendering him unable to look away.

Above his own head, Erik gathered his wrists. In the waiting time before being tied-up, he rested them against the bars of the bed.

“Luckily, you have outdated tastes,” he said.   
  
“Why?” asked Charles who was looking around for something he could use to tie.  
  
“Because in most hotels, beds no longer have bars. Don't use a tie, those are too easy to unbind.”

“ Oh? Oh...”   
  
Charles noticed, fastened to the wall, the curtains tie-backs. It was so rather lengthy cords, firmly braided, with on both ends, tassels that looked like pompons. He unfastened a tie-back and put a knee on the bed.   
  
“Come,” Erik said, “And stop always asking.”

“But, isn't...” 

“Come. Don't force me to have to tell you what to do.”   
  
Charles climbed on the bed. He felt his breath becoming irregular. He inhaled and exhaled deeply several times. Then, he step over Erik and sat astride on his belly. Erik was very calm, determined, and exemplarily cold. Charles wanted to hit him. When he slipped the tie-back behind the bars to start to bind Erik's wrists, Erik cut him.

“Wait... Put all the pillows behind my head.”

“Why?”

“You'll see.”

Charles complied and gathered the pillows under Erik's head. Once he had fastened the wrists, everything looked painful: the stretching of the arms, the angle of the neck, the tension in the shoulders. At the armpits, under the taut and white skin, the blue venules in the aura of red hairs were becoming green. The purity that, in such a little place, concentrated the contrast of the colours and the delicacy of the skin excited Charles so much that in a nervous gesture he tightened the knot on the wrists. Erik did not react. Everywhere, skin shuddered and tensed. It resisted. 

“Is it okay?” Charles enquired.

“Come closer.”

On his knees, Charles crept, a leg after the other.

“Closer...” 

The pillows under the neck bend his head in such a way that his face was a cliff towards which Charles was going.

The more Charles progressed forwards, the more he saw his cock getting closer to Erik's mouth. He was unable to suppress a violent sigh. Looking for a support that would not be Erik's body - because there was something sacred in that body that he could not touch just yet - he put his hands on the top bars of the bed. Before his knees embedded themselves into Erik's armpits, Erik, in a tense effort, bend his neck and dropped a kiss on the joint that was coming forwards. Charles did not understand. 

“ _That_ is for you to know I agree to everything,” Erik explained.

“In advance?” 

“Yes. In advance. I'm not afraid of you.”   
  
“I'm not afraid either.” 

“Yes! You are afraid. Afraid of yourself.”

“But...”

“Rubber...,” Erik cut short, glancing at Charles' cock.

Charles swallowed. He bend and retrieved from the bedside table drawer a condom he hooded up on his cock. He closed his eyes. He opened them. He moved forwards. 

Charles did not know how it happened. He did not know how his penis found itself all over sudden at the back of Erik's throat. He did not know if it had happened slowly, softly, according to a measured and respectful evolution, begging for an agreement, an harmony of glances, or if it had happened bluntly, like a striking sword, like something he might have felt guilty of and made ashamed of. No, he did not know, he was overwhelmed and when he saw his cock disappearing into Erik’s mouth, he also saw that Erik did not blink, focussed, and that _he_ wanted to take him deeper. And his cock disappeared, further and further, and Charles felt like he was entering a cave, a wet and chalky cave, devoided of life, or with life never known, never seen, strange, without suppleness, lives made of crystals, of calcified water. 

About to come, he withdrew. 

Erik twisted his jaw.

“I want, I want...,” Charles whispered.

“What?”

“You to take me...” finished Charles.

“Make up your mind and do.” 

Charles withdrew. He pulled out the condom, took a new one and, sliding lower into the bed, he rolled it on Erik's cock. It was all long and slow and painful and silent. Charles felt like he was locked into a crypt from which he would not want to get out. He wanted to stay there and pray forever. With sweeping, ceremonious movements, he caressed Erik, who in little thrusts was following his hand. Then, his desire being too sharp, he got himself ready, two fingers buried in himself that he coated with his saliva. Raised rear, he hold himself back on the headboard with his free hand, towering Erik who was watching at him unblinkingly, reading on his face his efforts, his tenacity, his determination. Erik said nothing; he was smiling and breathing out loudly, his exhalations sounding like encouragement, a barely concealed devotion facing Charles' desire and his unfolding will. 

Charles understood what Erik allowed him to do. 

At last, he was ready. He steered himself and... Missed his aim. Out of rage, he cried out.

He started again. He succeeded.   
  
The motions did not really count. It was unnecessary to know if it was in frenzy or in moderation that the toppling happened. It was also unnecessary to know of which, between Charles' arse and Erik's penis, had been the more effective. Nothing mattered except the building of a wall, built up around them, stone after stone, huge and proud, indestructible and Charles was a crowned king that would get the stones up by his sheer will. Under him, Erik's chest raised and fell, tensed and white, ginger in some places, veined in blue. It was an ancient slab of stone, which Charles could have hit and never broke. In Erik's eyes an unbearable certitude hold on and to that point, Charles, now converted, concurred with that certitude. 

When Charles felt that Erik was about to come, he asked:

“What are you thinking about?”   
  
Erik did not reply and so, Charles put his hands around his neck and repeated, more resolutely.

“What are you thinking?”   
  
“I think you found me.” 

Which meant that before being a benefit for Erik, it was one for Charles.

Charles withdrew his hands. Daring this time to touch Erik, he leaned on him and ordered.

“Yes... Wait... Hold it...”

It took a sole caress to himself to come. His pleasure was pointed, sharp and cutting like a carbon steel blade. From the small of his back, his power propagated, a power that he was discovering, infinite, with loosely defined edges he would never reach. As he was spending himself on Erik's torso, he ordered.

“Now, come...” 

Erik did as he was told. Charles did not know how he did that, how did he obeyed him so well. As he felt him coming into him, he contracted his muscles to constrain him further. He saw the head knocked over the pillow, the tense and pink neck where under the fragile skin pulsed the veins, the fettered wrists branded by the rope, the open mouth that let slip an endless wheeze, a whole and full assent. He saw knowledge, glory and the holy halo. 

He unfastened the ties. Of his hold itself, he freed Erik who rose.   
  
Erik did not try to rub his wrists. At the joint, like bracelets, shined the bruises. Charles thought he would have no more necessary thing than to watch the marks turn blue and how, on the bone, the skin would turn to marble. 

Confused, because there were still mysteries and secrets left, Charles hold Erik back.

“All of this, you wanted it?”  
  
“Yes.”

“But how did you know?”

“I did not know. I believed. I made a bet. I won.”

“You won...”

Erik waited, standing by the bed. He was naked and proud. He waited. Charles sat so as to face him. He raised his head.

“You have still not kissed me...”

“ You did not ask.”

“Kiss me.”

Erik got closer. The closer he get, the more Charles was stretching out on the bed. Erik climbed on him, on all fours and towered him.

“Is it allowed, what you are doing?” Charles said, meaning it as a joke.

Erik caressed his face. He was smiling. 

“Everything is allowed as long as you ask for it.” 

He kissed him, so tenderly, so softly, with such in-depth and sincere dedication that Charles thought he would cry. Then Erik rose and Charles took fright.

“ Stay,” he urged.

“I'm not leaving right now, I'm just going to the bathroom.” 

“To the bathroom? Oh, I see... but stay.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight, yes... And forever... Stay forever...”

“Forever?”

“ Yes. Forever.” 

And Erik kissed him once again without Charles having asked for it, and blowed softly on his lips.

“Okay, I'll bet on that too.”

At last, they laughed. Never Charles had laughed as much as that night. Erik, more than enjoying to be bind, was very funny, acerbic and nasty towards everybody. 

* * *

In spirit, they never left each other.

By a happy accident, it happened that for the rest, they suited each other. It had been a story of managements, adjusting, of unimportant inner workings. 

Often Charles bound Erik. Never Erik bound Charles.

Sometimes, they made love in absolute darkness, in absolute silence, without a sigh or a shout, without distraction or useless gesticulation for Charles to hear and understand how their bodies joined and for the impenetrable mystery that Erik revealed to occur again.

Some other time, they made love ordinarily and that was as good as it gets.

One summer, they went to Greece. It was very hot. In Delphi, Erik, bold and cunning, managed to get them locked on-site once night had fallen. Against one of the treasuries that bordered the path that led to the sanctuary, during hours, or at least what seemed hours to Charles, Erik had kissed him. In Charles' back, there was the ancient stone, scornful and cold, on his mouth, there was Erik's mouth, meticulous, docile, and hard.

Forever, Charles possessed Erik like Erik owned him. Like under the Greek skies, gods and men belong to each other, the latter building temples for the former in which they worship them.

**Author's Note:**

> It is always a treat to receive kudos, and for that, receive my heartfelt thanks! But I would be even more delighted if you were to comment. Have a lovely whatever the moment of the day it is where you are!


End file.
